BlackBerry Java Application Development v5.0 Beta 4 now live!

The latest iteration of the BlackBerry® Java® Application Development tools has arrived and it brings numerous enhancements. As outlined in our BlackBerry Java Application Development Beta 3 announcement there are already significant enhancements to the BlackBerry Java platform in v5.0 and the Beta 4 release builds upon that with the following new additions:

Enhanced BrowserField

(net.rim.device.api.browser.field2.BrowserField)

A substantially improved and enhanced version of the existing BrowserField functionality.

Widgets API

(net.rim.device.api.web.WidgetExtensions)

Allows you to register your own JavascriptTM extensions for a widget.

Widget Extension APIs

(net.rim.device.api.script.*)

Develop your own custom BlackBerry Widget extensions into Java.

MEID Retrieve API

(net.rim.device.api.system.CDMAInfo)

For developers on CDMA devices, you can now retrieve the MEID (ESN replacement).

Replaces the PhoneScreenField with a more flexible screen to allow full customization.

MIDP 2.1 Support

Fully supported in this release.

Content-Folder Support

Specify the device folder for your application (e.g. not just the Downloads folder).

WBXMLWriter and WBXMLParser

(net.rim.device.api.xml.jaxp.*)

Updates to ease provisioning of specific tables and allows for support of multiple codepages.

Biometric API

(net.rim.device.api.biometric.*)

Provides ability to extract fingerprint info from a smartcard to match against a scanned fingerprint.

Network API

(net.rim.device.api.io.transport.*)

Simplifies the code necessary to connect to the network across a variety of scenarios.

User Authentication API

(net.rim.device.api.userauthenticator.*)

Allows for alternative two factor authentication mechanisms to unlock the device.

We are really excited about these new APIs and look forward to seeing what you can do with them! For more detailed information on these new APIs, check out the Beta 4 Release Notes. I would love to hear what you think of the new BlackBerry Java Application Development v5.0 Beta 4 and to get your feedback on the APIs.

Inside BlackBerry Developers

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